Event alert: Heather Ann Thompson's Zeidler Lecture at Turner Hall, David Chrisinger for Veterans Week, history podcaster Mike Duncan, Gothic and Gumshoe with Wendy Webb and Matt Goldman, plus Michael Perry and Alexander McCall Smith next week

Here's what's happening at Boswell this week:

Monday, November 6, 7 pm, at Turner Hall, 1034 N 4th St:
Heather Ann Thompson, author of Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy

The Milwaukee Turners and Boswell Books are pleased to cosponsor the 2017 Frank P. Zeidler Memorial Lecture featuring Pulitzer Prize Winner Dr. Heather Thompson. Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising and its Legacy has been awarded both the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in history as well as the 2017 Bancroft Prize for history for its focus on the 1971 Attica Prison uprising.

From Mark Oppenheimer in The New York Times: "There’s nothing partisan or argumentative about Blood in the Water. The power of this superb work of history comes from its methodical mastery of interviews, transcripts, police reports and other documents, covering 35 years, many released only reluctantly by government agencies, and many of those “rendered nearly unreadable from all of the redactions,” Ms. Thompson writes. She has pieced together the whole, gripping story, from the conditions that gave rise to the rebellion, which cost the lives of 43 men, to the decades of government obstructionism that prevented the full story from being told."

Heather Ann Thompson is an award-winning historian at the University of Michigan. She is also the author of Whose Detroit?:Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City and the editor of Speaking Out: Activism and Protest in the 1960s and 1970s. She served on a National Academy of Sciences blue-ribbon panel that studied the causes and consequences of mass incarceration in the United States and has given congressional staff briefings on the subject.

Tuesday, November 7, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Celebrate Veterans Week with The Wisconsin Veterans Chamber of Commerce and Dryhootch, who present David Chrisinger, author of See Me for Who I Am: Student Veterans' Stories of War and Coming Home.

See Me for Who I Am aims to undermine current cultural stereotypes of veterans. It brings together twenty young student veterans working to bridge the media-created gap that divides them from the American people they have fought to protect. With thoughtfulness, humor, and honesty, they relive and relate their worst memories, illustrate shared experiences, explain to us the fulfillment of combat, and show us what going to war really entails. For veterans, these voices will ring familiar. For civilians, the stories open a view into a world few ever see and, in the process, affirm our common humanity.

David Chrisinger is an Associate Lecturer at UW-Stevens Point, where he teaches a veteran reintegration course, Back from the Front. He also assists college administrations and corporate employers to create and sustain more productive relationships with veterans. He is the founder and managing editor of Stronger at the Broken Places, a website dedicated not only to raising awareness of the struggles and triumphs of American veterans throughout history, but to helping today's generation of student veterans tell their stories of war and coming home.

Thursday, November 9, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Mike Duncan, author of The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic

Mike Duncan will be joining us at Boswell to discuss his new book about the fall of the Roman Republic. This free event is sure to be popular. Doors close if we reach capacity. Get here early!

Mike Duncan is one of the foremost history podcasters in the world. His award-winning series The History of Rome chronologically narrated the entire history of the Roman Empire over 189 weekly episodes. Duncan has continued this success with his ongoing series Revolutions, which so far has explored the English, American, French, and Haitian Revolutions.

From Kirkus Reviews: "Award-winning history podcaster Duncan offers a lively, extremely well-informed chronicle of nearly seven decades of Roman political and social life, less well-known than the age of Caesar, Cleopatra, and Marc Antony that followed." Read the whole review here.

Saturday, November 11, 2 pm, at Boswell:
Boswell presents a Gothic and Gumshoe event with Wendy Webb, author of The End of Temperance Dare and Matt Goldman, author of Gone to Dust

First up is our gothic. Wendy Webb’s first novel, The Tale of Halcyon Crane, received the 2011 Minnesota Book Award for genre fiction. Her second and third novels, The Fate of Mercy Alban and The Vanishing, established her as a leading suspense novelist, who reviewers are calling the Queen of the Northern Gothic.

When Eleanor Harper becomes the director of a renowned artists' retreat, she knows nothing of Cliffside Manor's dark past as a tuberculosis sanatorium, a 'waiting room for death.' After years of covering murder and violence as a crime reporter, Eleanor hopes that being around artists and writers in this new job will be a peaceful retreat for her as much as for them. But from her first fog-filled moments on the manor's grounds, Eleanor is seized by a sense of impending doom and realizes there's more to the institution than its reputation of being a haven for creativity.

And now our gumshoe. Gone to Dust is a sinister tale of a brutal crime and the ultimate cover-up. How do you solve a murder with no useable evidence? Private detective Nils Shapiro is focused on forgetting his ex-wife and keeping warm during another Minneapolis winter when a former colleague, neighboring Edina Police Detective Anders Ellegaard, calls with the impossible. A woman’s body has been found, brutally murdered and covered in bags of vacuum bag dust to destroy all evidence. When Shapiro digs into the dead woman’s history, it not only leads to further mystery but also to the potential killer.

Matt Goldman is a playwright and Emmy Award-winning television writer for Seinfeld, Ellen, and other shows. He brings his signature storytelling abilities to his debut novel Gone to Dust, which Lee Child called “A perfect blend of light touch and dark story - I want more of Nils Shapiro.”

Tuesday, November 14, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Michael Perry, author of Montaigne in Barn Boots: An Amateur Ambles Through Philosophy

The beloved memoirist and bestselling author of Population: 485 reflects on the lessons he's learned from his unlikely alter ego, French Renaissance philosopher Michel de Montaigne.

From Jim Higgins's profile of Perry in the Journal Sentinel: "'I'm really in over my head with this,' but that's part of the fun, Perry said of his literary stroll with Montaigne. 'There are people who've built entire careers parsing just a paragraph of his. But on the other hand, I think that's part of Montaigne's charm, you have a right to sit in your deer stand and read him and go, Oh, well, here's what he made me think.'" Read the whole article here.

And finally, don't forget about our event with Alexander McCall Smith on November 16. Tickets are $29. We're almost sold out, so don't wait for the last minute. Buy here.

We're also selling books as the designated bookseller for Matt Bellassai's event on Wednesday, November 8 at Turner Hall Ballroom. Tickets are still available. Get them here.

And we're also the designated bookseller for the Hillary Rodham Clinton What Happened? tour. This one's almost sold out. Purchase here. Note that the basic ticket to this event does not include the book.